The present invention relates to an SAW (surface acoustic wave) electric part and a frequency conversion circuit using SAW parts.
In recent years, filters have been used in parts of a device. For example, as shown in FIG. 2, a plurality of filters are used in a receiver. In FIG. 2, an electric wave received by an antenna 1 is supplied to a frequency mixer 6 through a band-pass filter (BPF) 2 and an amplifier 3. A first local oscillation signal generated by a PLL oscillator 4 is supplied to the frequency mixer 6 through a BPF 5. The reception signal and the first local oscillation signal are mixed with each other, and a signal having the output frequency is output through a BPF 7, thereby obtaining a first intermediate frequency signal. This first intermediate frequency signal is mixed with a second local oscillation signal supplied from a second local oscillation circuit 8, and the output signal is output from a BPF 10 to obtain a second intermediate frequency signal. The second intermediate frequency signal is amplified by an amplifier 11 and output.
In recent years, lightweight, low-profile, compact devices are preferably used. Compact receivers are strongly demanded. The BPF 7 has a proper frequency to be constituted by an SAW filter. When the BPF 7 is constituted by the SAW filter, the BPF 7 can be formed to be compact. The BPF using the SAW filter is proposed.
However, the SAW filter has degraded temperature characteristics, the center frequency of the filter is shifted due to a change in temperature. Although it is considered that temperature is kept to be constant by a thermostat, this method requires a large space to disable realization of a compact BPF. Although a band-pass width may be increased to cope with the degraded temperature characteristics, when the width is increased, an adjacent channel cannot be cut off. In addition, if a group delay characteristic curve is not flat, a pulse waveform is distorted in digital communications, thereby degrading the reliability of the digital communications. It is difficult to flatten the group delay characteristic curve in a wide range. On the other hand, a local oscillation frequency may be changed in accordance with a change in frequency of the filter to always equalize the output frequency of a frequency conversion circuit to the center frequency of the filter. However, the frequency shift of the SAW filter cannot be easily detected. If it can be detected, the local oscillation frequency cannot be easily controlled using the detection result.